What do pro riders eat and drink during stage races?

Fuelling for a single ride is one thing, but here CW explores how pro teams tackle the task of taking on sustenance for an entire stage race

Eating during a stage race is not a matter to be taken lightly.

Recovery from one day’s effort has to be complemented with refreshing and refuelling for the next, while working around the logistical complications of a busy race schedule in unfamiliar surroundings.

At the Tour of Oman, we took a daily look at how riders and teams approached feeding.

Stage one: break for lunch

If the wrath of your manager is not reason enough to get in the early escape, here is another. “If you get in the break, it’s always easy to resupply from the car behind you,” notes Aimé De Gendt after the stage.

In making the day’s five-man move, the Sport Vlaanderen-Baloise rider swept up both intermediate sprints, three gels, two bars, and “a few bits of peperkoek”. That’s a spiced breakfast cake the Belgian team take with them everywhere.

It’s hot and humid here and De Gendt worked his way through nine bottles on the 176.5km stage.

Stage four: feeding frenzy

There was no official feed zone on today’s 118km blast of a stage but that didn’t stop the soigneurs creating an unofficial one atop the summit of the Bousher Al Amerat climb.

“The race comes past here three times so it’s the obvious place to hand up bottles,” explains Dimension Data’s Jenny Wuppermann.

A gel attached to a bottle by an elastic band appears to be the package of choice with 43km to go.

Some teams also have mussettes dripping water from the ice packs within.

While the team helpers all arrange themselves neatly, the order goes to pot the moment the bunch arrives.

Soigneurs lurch and retreat into the road. Riders swerve and shout at one another. Bags are grabbed. Bottles are dropped. Urgent demands are projected up the road. The bunch passes and the soigneurs clamber over the central reservation.

Twenty minutes later they’ll repeat this chaotic exchange in the opposite direction.

Soigneurs are always on hand to give out bottles

Stage five: self-supplier

Hugo Houle is in the hotel’s business lounge serving himself a coffee.

Last time we spoke was in Montreal when he told us of the vast quantities of maple syrup he smuggles out of his native Quebec each season.

The Ag2r rider particularly likes the fact he evades airline weight restrictions by stuffing it all in his bike box.

Now picking up the story of his private supply chain from the other end, he explains:

“I live with another Canadian in France, Antoine Duchesne [Direct Energie]. In our garage we have a full stock of it.”

A small portion of this joins him whenever he travels to races or training camps. “I always take my own maple syrup from Quebec because it’s hard to find a real one outside of Canada.”

So how does he apply it? “Basically everywhere the French put honey,” he smiles, “I put maple syrup.”

Rice cakes are a staple of a rider’s race day diet

Stage six: A biker’s buffet

The rider’s hotel buffet is extensive but still has its limitations. That’s why BMC Racing Team have turned room 3149 into a private pantry.

It’s actually a bedroom assigned to one of the soigneurs, but during waking hours it doubles as a free-for-all buffet.

An extra mini-bar fridge has been borrowed from a neighbouring room and the surfaces accommodate an array of cereals, spreads and bread.

“Generally it’s for the riders after the race,” explains head soigneur in Oman, Geert Tiebergyn.

“If there’s a long transfer, they might have it in the car but today for instance when it’s a short ride back, there’ll be rice and pasta waiting. Plus we’ll have a lot of fruit, yoghurt, nut paste, that sort of thing.”

The door is either left off the latch or riders are issued keycards so they can come and go as they please.

“It’s food they can access outside of meals,” Tierbergyn adds. Sometimes the riders descend en masse late in the evenings. That’s when chocolate time is.

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